PASSION PROJECTS

REAL TIME ANALYTICS with VR

A case study of leveraging Virtual Reality with real time Data for Training

Case Study Coming Soon!

SPACE ART

My Zen Practice of creating Space Scenes

Its no secret that one of my hobbies is to create Space Art or ‘Spacescapes’. Its a zen thing. Basically, many years ago, one of my game directors asked me to start thinking about making a space game. That day, I went home and made some really bad space art based on some tutorials I found. It looked awful, but I fell in love with the process. Fast forward 8’ish years and I still do it. Here is free course I create to share my process of creating spacescapes!

PROCESS PROTOTYPING

Mixing Learning with Tools Usage

Back in 2013, I was trying to figure out a way to get better at tools like Illustrator, Flash, Photoshop, and After Effects. The problem was, that in order to get better at the tools, you also need to have solid ideas around ‘what’ to create. But I was trying to deal with the ‘how’. Two ideas spurred out of this.

The first was “what if the end output did not really matter?” Meaning that rather than having a specific idea going into the session, you were given a random topic to create something around. Then the process became more of the focus. If the end does not matter personally, then the process to get to the end becomes more important.

The second idea was, what if you looked at something that was already created and tried to recreate it? Meaning that if you looked at complete art, the focus was to try and recreate that art with the tools you are trying to learn. An example of how I used this process, was children’s activity books. You can get them at Target, they cost about a dollar and are meant to teach kids math, reading, and so on. But here is the great part, they have excellent Vector art! Needless to say, I have many kids activity books that Jackson has never seen.

Below you will find examples of the first kind of “Process Prototyping” discussed above. Each of these sessions were recorded and then sped up. There are some additional videos in here that are examples of rapid development focused on tool learning:

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I will write more about Process Prototyping in my upcoming book “Furious Learning”. Stay tuned!

GAME PROTOTYPES

An Experiment of Creating 1-Day Development Game Prototypes

Below are a series of example game prototypes created for various reasons. Much like the ideas of Process Prototyping discussed above, the focus was ‘speed’. In each of the examples below, they were created in a day and meant to be fully featured games, ones with a Beginning, Middle, and End.

Unfortunately, the examples were built in Flash, which as you probably know, the various web browsers have been removing support for. So what you get to see here is simple descriptions with some art. The eventual goal is to revisit these games and update them into new formats. For now my focus is on helping those reach their career goals through quality training and education.

That said, feel free to reach out to me if any of these spark your interest for any reason. I am more than happy to share code and art assets if you ask for them. Take a look below!

Arguably the ‘best thing I ever created’ according to my wife, Color Shift was a puzzle game where players raced to the edge of a game board using color instructions. Instructions that changed every 30 seconds. This one still may make it to full production.

Fishin’ was a simple game where accuracy was key. Players are tempted to think the game is a race, but true to fishing in real life, you need to wait for the fish to come to you.

Survive was meant to be a stressful submission into the ‘one game a day’ line up. This is all about avoiding the horde of enemies that come flying at you. Its an endless game where all you do is dodge.

Fruit Stand was a game that was built to study games that had variable markets. In the beginning of the round, you are given special rules to follow. It is up to you to remember those rules throughout the round and earn as much money as possible.

Asteroid Hunter was one of two game created for a Flash Game class that I taught at Sanford-Brown. The goal was to give the students the art and have them assemble the game. This was the more advanced of the two challenges.

Flies in the Kitchen was an example for my Sanford-Brown students that you could have great art, but very simple game play to make something appealing to the market. It had very simple game play, but required quick responses from the player to defeat the flies.

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